I had my clutch go out, and was able to replace it myself. Hope this helps someone!

About a year and a half ago (god its been a while... i guess I procrastinated on posting this...), I was at a stop sign, and went to pull out... a tiny bit harder going into 1st than usual.. a little harder getting into 2nd... wtf, would barely go into 3rd... limp onto side street, park, can't shift into any gear...

Thankfully, while wandering over towards a large tree to go to the bathroom (haha, yes i had to go real bad!) a guy walked out of his house... he was nice enough to let me use his bathroom instead, and as it turned out he had a wrx he worked on & helped my push my car into his driveway & leave it there for a few days....

The steeler said it sounded like either my clutch went bad, or i had "broken a syncro in between 2nd / 3rd"... ~$3000 for them to fix it, IF it was the clutch, more if it was the tranny.

So, I did what anybody would do.. i bought a car lift instead seriously. However, you can rent / borrow shop time in many locations for not too much, so even without my, um, unusual choice this may be an option for you. It required a couple non-standard tools, such as tripple square bits, a front end kit (mostly ball joint remover) a tranny jack, and a clutch disc centering tool. I would not attempt this job without a way to get you and a tranny lift under the car with ease (aka a lift).

I took my time getting everything together, since I had another car I could borrow (not too much time, the other car was a minivan but I got my bend-pak mx-10acx bolted to my garage floor and got to work.

a6's, at least the 2.7t's, use a 'dual mass' flywheel. Its not entirely a gimic, I can see how it improves upon a monolithic one, but you can't disassemble the thing & as a consequence it is much harder / not worth machining to resurface. The dealer will only replace them - to the tune of $1000 for the single part! Napa had a new one for $600~$700. I did find a shop that would give resurfacing it a shot, but they weren't too sure and given that it seamed to be in good condition, I decided to keep it. I did compare it to the napa new part, and actually really made the choice to try it out when I discovered the throw-out bearing had too much play and was by far the most likely point of failure.

I did by a whole new clutch kit, though, which for $300 from prostreetonline.com included the bearing, pressure plate, and friction disc.

Disassembly was pretty straighforward, albeit involved as you have to remove the exhaust & driveshaft from around the tranny.

Installation would have been much less stressful if I had not forgot the spacer (3/8" thick, goes around the tranny in between it & the engine block) off in the corner of my garage, and then though that I just couldn't get the tranny back on all the way!!! wow did that suck! Also, if your stick shift ends up pointed to the side, you bolted the cross-link to the wrong hole. Its a poor design - there are two holes within inches of each other that are the same size & from underneigth the car its hard to tell the correct one. You can fix this without having to drop anything again, though, it is just very madening if you think you must have really f'd up.

Overall, though, excersize lots of patience and this job can go very smoothly. At the time, this was my first major repair job done on my own. Since, i have been able to do pretty much all the work on my family's vehicles...


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